Rail line could ease nightmare Tri-Valley drive
Valley Link will take commuters from Central Valley, may be up in 5-7 years
For supercommuters traveling two or more hours from the Central Valley to the East Bay or San Francisco, and for all those I-580 drivers fighting for the same lane space: Help is on the way — and it might be coming a lot sooner than you think.
A newly formed transit authority is moving at a lightning pace to design and build a rail link between the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station and Lathrop in the Central Valley.
The authority’s governing board last month released its vision for the Valley Link: a 10-station commuter line, with BART-like service in the Tri-Valley, that could start carrying passengers in five to seven years.
It would provide a much-needed alternative to a notoriously mind-numbing commute that’s only getting worse as more residents flee the Bay
Area’s high home prices for cheaper land in the Central Valley, said Michael Tree, the executive director of the new authority, called the Tri-Valley-San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority.
The “megaregion project” acknowledges that a growing number of workers are commuting into the region from farther away, said Tracy Mayor Pro Tem Veronica Vargas.
More than half of Tracy residents leave the city every day for work, according to the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, and a full one-third of them are commuting more than an hour in each direction. Traffic along I-580, measured by the time drivers spend crawling along at less than 35 mph, grew 27 percent between 2014 and 2016, and it’s estimated to get worse — growing 60
percent by 2040.
“The proposed rail line will not only improve businesses in the Bay Area by having a fresher and more efficient workforce ready to start their workday,” Vargas said, “it will for sure improve the overall quality of life for our residents.”
The trains would run all day at 12-minute intervals between the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station and a new station on Greenville Road near Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, with service on the weekdays and weekends that matches BART service, and at 24-minute intervals between Greenville Road and Lathrop.
It would share stations with the Altamont Corridor Express (ACE) at the proposed Greenville location, as well as a new joint station in Lathrop.
Trains would run on a single set of tracks, with areas for them to pass each other, along the I-580 median between the Dublin/ Pleasanton and Greenville
stations. From there, the trains would travel 16 miles along an abandoned Transcontinental Railroad rightof-way to Mountain House, where they would then use Union Pacific tracks to travel the rest of the way to Lathrop.
The estimated $1.8 billion project would save money with open air, tracklevel stations, similar to Amtrak stops, Tree said.
And, because of other efforts to study rail connections and extensions in the past, the Valley Link authority would be able to deliver a project-ready environmental impact review by July of next year, a process that usually takes two to three years. That will put the project in the running for the next round of gas tax funds — if voters in November reject Proposition 6, which would repeal the tax and the funding that goes
with it.
Livermore Mayor John Marchand, who had fought to get BART to extend the Dublin/Pleasanton line an additional 5.5 miles to a proposed station along I-580 at Isabel Avenue in Livermore, said a lot of questions remain about the project. It’s unclear who would fund the ongoing operations of the system, since it straddles two counties and has no designated agency to run the trains and maintain them.
It does have about a third of the funding it needs — in large part because BART’s board in May declined to move forward with its $1.6 billion project, which opened the door for the Valley Link authority to receive about $400 million in sales tax revenues voters approved in 2014.
The project also has an additional $235 million available, Tree said.
But it’s unclear where it would get the rest of the money, Marchand said. It’s also unclear whether BART could handle the added capacity Valley Link would bring, and, at the same time, if that ridership would be high enough to support a proposed 4,095unit housing development with 2.1 million square feet of new commercial space that was contingent upon BART coming to Isabel Avenue, he said.
Those are some of the questions a feasibility study, due on July 1, and the accompanying environmental review will answer, Tree said.
“We promised we would not build until full BART comes to Isabel, and full BART is not coming to Isabel,” Marchand said. “But we need to provide a link to Livermore residents and hopefully get people off 580 … recognizing we have to look out for the best interests of the citizens of Livermore who have been paying into (the BART district) for 50 years.”